Since many people have asked "what's taking so long" and "what new features will Book II have", here is a list of the new features that are in the game now or currently being worked on.

This list was last updated December 2008.

ENGINE
* 1024 x 768 native resolution
* Numerous optimizations implemented which improved engine speed (up to 30%) and lowers RAM usage.
* All tiles have been re-rendered to take advantage of the higher engine resolution.
* Enhanced lighting and special effects.
* New weather effects: snow, rain, and thunderstorms. Weather isn't just a special effect; severe weather effects gameplay stats and skills.
* "Brightness Booster" option for players who are afraid of the dark.
* In-game control over sound volume has been improved
* Audio driver selectable at launch for improved hardware compatibility or the option to shut off all game sounds.
* Rebuilt timer function which should fix the problems associated with leaving your computer on for long periods of time.
* Most keyboard commands can now be remapped via .cfg file.
* The saved game location can be alerted via a statement in the .cfg file.
* Saved game function rebuilt with more redundancy and error catching to cut down on the number of bad saved games.
* Numerous updates to the scripting engine and file handling, making the game one step closer to being fully modable.

GUI
* New GUI layout
* Additional save game slots (20 total)
* Increased number of Inventory slots (79 total)
* Increased number of Quick Slot spaces (10 total)
* New Key Ring feature: any key acquired is placed on a virtual key ring and does not take up inventory space.
* Enhanced Alchemy mixer with one-click mixing via a built-in recipe book
* Two "equipment configuration" presets for convenient swapping of armor and weapons sets.
* You can now dump torches by right-clicking on the torch icon.
* Walking via keyboard
* "Health meters" on objects while bashing show exactly how much structural integrity remains

GAME PLAY
* 7 new spells; several existing spells have been altered/upgraded.
* Gender Selection (play as a male or female character).
* Selectable attack mode alters damage and accuracy based on character ability and enemy stats.
* Parry mode for defensive posturing when needed.
* New skill: Repair. Used in fixing worn equipment for better performance or increased value before selling.
* New skill: Foraging. Used to increase your chance of finding food and alchemy components during your travels.
* Significant skill rebalancing for more unified progression.
* Weapons and armor now deteriorate realistically with use (optional). Increasing your weapon and armor skills slows deterioration rate, and the Repair Skill can be used to fix damaged equipment.
* Food and Water now a factor in survival. Long treks into deep dungeons will require planning and preparation. (Optional)
* Powder kegs can now be picked up and dropped in new locations which makes for strategic game play options.
* Game world objects more dynamic: explosions and fire can affect objects; more objects are usable.
* Rebuilt the luminosity function to remove exploits. This corrects the "Torch exploit" as well as balancing "Hide in Shadow" better.
* New difficulty modes and tracked statistics add to replay value.
* New item generation function for thousands of unique weapon and armor variations.
* Difficulty settings for easier or more challenging gameplay.

MISC
* Improved User's Manual with additional game information often requested by players
* In the Character Editor, pressing F1-F5 now loads premade character data into the editor and allows you to modify it from there, rather than just automatically starting the game with a pre-designed character.

Woooh some interesting things there basky....looking forward to seeing your new baby running(not the baby you just had, heh you know what I mean.)

Impressive, there are lots of nice features to improve game play. I can't wait to see the game.

Book II is sounding better and better. Any clues as to how much longer we have to wait?

Wow, your staying pretty busy! Looking forward to seeing the changes!

I love that your allowing walking using the keyboard.

Quite a list, not that I understand the first 2 sections But those I do look great!
Thanks for the update!

You didn't say awesomest story line everz though so now I'm worried;)

This is a very cool list. Of course, I have some comments, and questions...


Will there be option to insert an "Are you sure you want to save this?" dialog box in the saving process?

I can tell you I have accidentally overwritten previously saved characters on more than one occasion with the current system, and I think a final "Are you sure you want to save this?" dialog box as a final step in saving a game might have saved me from making a mistake a few times.


Will items, even including things like swords & armor, auto-stack on their own in the inventory, or we will still have to manually stack them ourselves (and in cases like weapons and armor, we can't stack them no matter what) like we have to do in Book I?


I have to say, I've loved the sound of each of these since I first heard about them, way back when...


These are very welcome additions to the game, especially the first two.


Meanwhile, I'm just waiting to see whether we'll be able to mix our own Predator Sight potions in Book II.

That said, I'm glad spells have been reworked, as I was disappointed in a few of them (e.g. Sunder Flesh & Smite, to name two) in Book I.


I'll be very interest to see how these work out...


This is where I have a major question - can you go into more detail (either now, or perhaps when the article is released) on exactly how the character creation screen has been "redesigned" (I'm pretty sure that's how you've described it previously)?

For example, will we finally be able to "deselect" a skill after choosing it when creating a character (something you can't seem to do now in Book I - which forces you to start the whole process over from scratch)?

Also, and I've asked for this before - will we be able to keep track of in-game days spent playing in Book II? (While knowing how many real hours I've played is nice, I've always wanted to keep track of in-game days/dates.)

Finally, has the Lore/recognize unknown items portion of the game been reworked? (I was always frustrated that boosting my Intelligence even to 15 or 17 wouldn't allow me to recognize even simple items like "Large Emeralds" and "Large Rubies" or mid-level, non-magical weapons and armor in Book I...)

Thanks a bunch for the update!

Easy enough. It will be in there.


We can't stack Weapons and Armor because each piece is unique in that they have varying attributes such as bonuses and condition. But, the game now autostacks everything else.


Yeah, me too. We haven't played much with recipes in Book II yet. I can say that there are some new reagents and so some recipes will be different from Book I.


The Character Editor looks very similar, but has been overhauled quite a bit. It is a bit more user friendly. I am not sure why you can't deselect skills in Book I...I can, unless you are talking about a problem I am not aware of.


Yes.


Lore is one of the last few spells we haven't tweaked yet, but it is on our ToDo list!

[edited for my hasty spelling errors.]

Actually, here I was asking about "natural" item recognition, or, at least, item recognition with low level Lore skill.

Personally, I've never had any problems with the Lore spell (except maybe for the fact that the Lore spell only seems to work when set at a Level 3 or 4 casting level!), and the Lore spell has always worked fine for me.

Thanks for all your other answers!

It might be due to no one mentioning in game or instructions that you have to 'right click' on the skill number you mistakenly added too many to. At least that is what happens when I do it on my Mac. This only works when you have put at least 1 pt. into the skill. After you okay everything you can't take it back the next time you level up.

I hope this helps.

I've tried the laptop equivalent, Control-Clicking, before, and that has never worked. Neither does Option-Clicking, Command-Clicking, or Shift-Clicking.
(Come to think of it, I'm not sure Right-Clicking worked on my brother's PC either, and I'm pretty sure I tried that, though maybe I didn't...)

Anyway, if it matters, I play Book I on a MacBook.

It sounds like this issue may be related to my inability to attack "friendly" NPC's with spells, using either Control- or Shift-Clicking, that I've mentioned before.

This maybe an issue specific to Mac laptops...

It all sounds very cool. When you talk about "significant skill rebalancing", does this mean we'll get more points for skill allocation each level? Or just that the "benefit per point" ratios of the different skills have been altered relative to each other? Or am I just going to have to have a bit of patience and wait and see?



Certainly on my Mac Mini, the right-click stuff works fine, but I'm using a standard PC keyboard and mouse (with a bit of creative keyboard remapping). So, it sounds very much like it's just an issue of finding how to persuade the laptop to send a real "right-click" event to the game - I guess maybe this isn't possible, which might explain why most applications offer the alternative of control-click or similar. However, it might be that you can find some combination that's trapped by the OS itself to send the appropriate low-level event.

I remember reading somewhere ages ago that hold two fingers on the pad whilst pressing the button was another way of producing a right-click - have you tried this? It might be a setting you need to enable in the system config, and I believe it only works with certain models of Macbook, but it's worth a try...

Amazing!

When I selected that option in System Preferences (it's called a "secondary click" with two fingers on trackpad + button), selling back Skills suddenly worked! (I'll have to try casting spells on friendly NPCs this way now too...)

Anyway, thanks for the advice. This will work as a "workaround" for now.

Still, I'm hoping if BW and co. can figure out a way to get the traditional Control-Click to work on Mac laptops...

It's fixed. You can test the 1.05 Book I demo soon, and I have confirmed that the problem doesn't exist in Book II.